Mercedes-Benz Vito Tourer Review 2025: Price, specs & boot space

If you need to carry seven or eight passengers but want something with a bit more badge kudos and a slightly more upmarket feeling than something like a Citroen SpaceTourer, quite possibly. Yes, the Vito Tourer is more expensive than less fancy rivals, but it does justify the premium.

For the panel van, we recommended going for the base-spec Pro, but given that the Vito Tourer is more likely to be something other than a work vehicle, you might well want to upgrade to the Select with its body-coloured bumpers for a less utilitarian look. We'd probably stick with the shorter L2 if possible, because it should fit into the average UK parking space. 

Then, it's a case of deciding whether or not you want the electric eVito Tourer instead of a diesel. It's difficult to say if one is 'better' than the other – a lot of it is going to come down to how easily you can integrate an EV into your life. The eVito is certainly very relaxing to drive and provides effortless performance, but its range of up to 221 miles (which might equate to a good chunk less than 200 at colder times of year) won't cut it for everyone. It's also a lot more expensive, and no longer gets out of paying vehicle tax. 

If you do opt for the diesel, your engine choice is narrowed slightly compared to the panel van. We'd be tempted to opt for the more powerful 116 engine, which provides a reasonably sprightly 163PS. If you're going to be regularly filling most or all of the Vito's nine seats, the pokier engine will mean you're not left flooring it just to get up to the national speed limit with any vague sense of urgency. 

Plenty of manufacturers offer people carrier versions of their vans, but there isn't as much choice as you might think, because a lot of them are essentially the same thing besides branding and light styling differences. 

The new T7 Volkswagen Transporter Shuttle, for example, is now a 'badge-engineered' version of the Ford Tourneo Custom, the passenger version of the Ford Transit Custom. Then you've got the Stellantis group, where all sorts of sharing goes on, meaning the Citroen Spacetourer is pretty much the same van as a Peugeot Traveller and a Vauxhall Vivaro Life. Toyota isn't even a part of Stellantis, yet offers its own version of those vehicles, called the Proace Verso.

The Mercedes-Benz is the plushest option of all these sorts of people-carrying vans, though. And although the VW Transporter/Ford Tourneo Custom cousins are a lot fresher, the Merc is a similar age to the Stellantis (and Stellantis-adjacent, in the Toyota's case) horde. 

Things get plusher still in the Mercedes-Benz V-Class, which is based on the Vito. It's even more expensive than the Vito Tourer, though. 

It'd be wrong to expect something that feels as fancy as a Mercedes-Benz passenger car in a van setting. These vehicles are built to withstand a far harsher life, which means you get more in the way of hard-wearing plastics rather than an abundance of soft-touch surfaces. 

That being said, the Vito Tourer does feel a cut above other vans. The steering wheel, ignoring those silly touch-sensitive pads, feels very premium, and although we often moan about shiny black plastic for being scratch and fingerprint prone, it's used sparingly and to good effect here to uplift the cabin.

Most importantly, everything feels put together well, and as though it'll still look good after many thousands of miles of use.

The infotainment system was starting to feel like old hat in the pre-update version of the Vito, but the new version, used across the entire range, including the Touring, is more like it. 

The 10.25-inch screen is on the smaller size by modern standards, and this results in some of the icons being rather diminutive and not the easiest to use when in motion. It's otherwise a good setup, though, with smart colour schemes, a responsive touch surface and a logical menu system.

The audio system is decent enough. There's no option to upgrade it, before you get excited about the thought of speccing one of the lovely Burmester systems available in a lot of Mercedes-Benz cars. 

For keeping your devices charged, there are two USB-C ports in the front and a wireless phone charging pad. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connectivity are included as standard.

The Vito Tourer generally seats up to nine in three rows of three, but it is possible to spec it as an eight-seater. Meanwhile, the L3 version of the eVito Tourer is supplied as an eight-seater. 

The Vito Tourer is available as an L2, which is 5,140mm long, and as a 5,370mm-long L3. Think carefully if you really need the longer one, as it'll hang over the edge of the average UK parking space, and could poke out into the pavement if you've a small single driveway space. 

Maximum payloads range from just over 700kg in the eVito Tourers to 917kg in a Pro L2 114. The Vito Tourer has a load space of up to 1,700 litres, which you can expand considerably by ditching either or both of the seat benches. 

This is easier said than done, though. The third row is one complete unit, and as such, it's extremely heavy and requires at least two people to remove and reinstall, and even then, it's a faff trying to get it back in since it's near enough the width of the load bay. We also had a bit of difficulty getting the bench to lock back into place when we gave this a go.

It's slightly easier for the middle row, which is split in two, so that only a single seat needs to be rotated forward to allow access to the third row. 

The Vito Tourer's engine line-up is more limited than that of the panel/crew versions. It misses out on the 190PS '119' model, so you're left to choose between the 114 (136PS) and the 116 (163PS), and you can only combine those with the nine-speed automatic gearbox here, with the six-speed manual not available.

Although we haven't tried either option in the panel van, we got on well with the 190PS version we've tested separately, which at its core is the same base engine as the other two – a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder diesel engine. Although such units aren't known for refinement, this one is relatively smooth. The automatic gearbox is slow-witted, though, particularly when you want to kick down a gear and accelerate a bit quicker. 

So far, we've only trialled the Tourer as an eVito electric van. Again, there's a distinction here between the Tourer and the panel/crew vans, with the latter having to make do with a 60kWh battery pack and a 116PS motor. Presumably because the Tourer is expected to do longer trips more often than a panel van, which is more likely to be used more locally by a tradesperson, the Tourer has a 90kWh battery.

This increases the range, and you also get a much more powerful motor outputting 204PS and 362Nm of torque. The 0-62mph time is 12 seconds, which doesn't sound anything too special, but the instant arrival of that torque means that the eVito feels quicker than that figure suggests. 

There's an effortlessness to the way it gets around, and without a four-cylinder diesel engine grumbling away, the eVito Tourer is super relaxing to drive. There's even a Sport mode, although it doesn't feel hugely different. More obvious is the switch to Eco, which noticeably sandbags the electric powertrain.

As already mentioned, the diesel engine isn't too noisy, although it can get quite vocal when worked hard. You'll have no such issue with the eVito Tourer, whose electric motor only makes the faintest of whirrs even at full throttle.

Even without an engine to compete with wind and road noise, neither is at a noticeably high volume on the move. Again, we'll have to add our 'for a van' caveat here.

For the 2024 update, the Mercedes Vito range was blessed with a greater level of standard safety equipment. Autonomous emergency braking, a driver attention monitor, blind spot assistance, lane assistance, speed limit assistance and 'eCall' (which automatically alerts emergency services if you get into an accident) are all included at no extra cost. 

While Euro NCAP used to rate light commercial vehicles as Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum, but the safety body has switched to a star rating system much like its car tests. The Vito's Platinum score has become a five-star rating, therefore. The pre-update van with fewer safety systems managed only a Silver rating, now equivalent to three stars out of five. 

The eVito Tourer has a fast-charging rate of 110kW, which is quite a bit better than the 80kW managed by the panel and crew versions, while slightly behind the 125kW offered by a Volkswagen Transporter Shuttle Electric. 

Plugged into a fast enough charger, you'll be able to take the battery from 20 to 80% in 40 minutes, assuming optimal conditions. Public chargers can be extremely expensive, though – such a stop could cost you as much as £40 or more and the pricier stations.

Where possible, then, you'll be wanting to keep your eVito Tourer charged at home. Fully charging at home will cost somewhere between £20 - £25 on an average tariff, but there are variable products available that offer a lower per kWh rate at certain times of day, making it a lot cheaper. 

When charging at home with a wallbox, you can expect it to take about 12 hours to charge to full from near flat. Using a three-pin plug isn't recommended, partly because it might not be good for your home electrical system, and also because it'll take at least three times as long.

Our usual source for reliability data is the HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index from our sister website, but it doesn't cover vans, making it tricky to judge the Vito for reliability. We can get a bit of a steer from how well Mercedes-Benz did as a brand, though, and on that front, it's a poor showing, with the German firm ranked as 30th out of 33 for reliability. 

It should help that the current Vito is a proven model at this stage, however. Also, by opting for the eVito Tourer, there are fewer moving parts, which means there isn't as much to go wrong. 

The warranty length of three years is pretty common, but more unusual is the offering of unlimited mileage cover during that time. Meanwhile, the eVito Tourer has a separate warranty covering the battery pack, which lasts up to eight years or 100,000 miles. 

The Vito range as a whole runs from group 27 to 44 of 50. The eVito is towards the upper end of that, which doesn't surprise us, as electric vehicles do cost more to insure on average, and the eVito also costs a lot more than its diesel equivalents. 

The Vito Tourer is still considered a light goods vehicle, meaning it's £335 a year for Vehicle Excise Duty (VED). Electric vans are no longer exempt, so you'll pay that same rate even if you've opted for the eVito Tourer. Vans aren't subject to the premium car tax levied at vehicles costing more than £40,000, though.

Like the panel van Vito, the Vito Tourer is offered as either a Pro or Select. The Pro has a decent offering of kit, including 17-inch alloy wheels, climate control, a leather steering wheel, 10.25-inch infotainment touchscreen, Android Auto/Apple CarPlay smartphone connectivity, a reversing camera and cruise control. 

It looks quite basic, though, with unpainted bumpers front and rear. The Select looks a lot smarter thanks to a switch to body-coloured bumpers, and you also get power-folding door mirrors, LED headlights with automatic high beam, the parking package, a heated driver's seat, and a smartened up interior including ambient lighting.